Mobile Microsoft Office on the new OS is plain Jane, but functional. (Source: Engadget)

Unfortunately, if you connect to Facebook, the OS fills you contacts list with every single Facebook friend, essentially breaking this crucial part of the phone. (Source: Engadget)

Microsoft seems to be on a good path, but will customers tolerate problem spots?

Terry
Myerson, the Microsoft Corporate VP of Windows Phone
Engineering who was recently called out on the Microsoft
Kin phone debacle, had some good
news to report yesterday. Windows Phone 7 hardware and
software has been released in beta form to developers and a handful
of reviewers.

Myerson writes:

Starting
today, thousands of prototype phones from ASUS, LG and Samsung are
making their way into the hands of developers over the next few
weeks. Combine that with the beta
release of the Windows Phone developer tools, and I can’t wait
to see how our developer partners take advantage of our new approach
to smart design and integrated mobile experiences. I’m personally
working on a flash card app for my daughter, and am consistently
amazed by the ease with which Silverlight and Visual Studio make WP7
apps possible.

Early
impressions of the phone boil down to that Microsoft seems to be
nailing many key elements, but in other places presents conspicuously
broken or missing functionality.

First let's get the bad
out of the way. As widely rumored, Microsoft has not
included copy and paste yet. There is a small chance that
this will be included in the final version. Early reviewers say
that text selection is working well -- so it seems baffling that
Microsoft would not include
it. But at this point that appears to be the case.

Also
missing is
third-party multitasking, which both Apple's iOS 4 and Google's
Android OS currently support (and something that previous iterations
of Windows Mobile supported). That's not to say updates won't
be available to various apps, but it does mean that transitions to
them may be significantly clunkier. And Flash web media plugin
is missing -- and even stranger still, Microsoft's own Silverlight
also isn't implemented.

Finally, perhaps the most egregious
sin is that for those with Facebook accounts, if you use your account
on the phone, it will pull in your contacts -- all of them.
This makes the contacts list -- an essential part of the phone
experience – nearly unusable.

Moving on to the okay,
Microsoft has reportedly done an okay job squeezing a hybrid Internet
Explorer 7/8 browser into the phone. Nothing fancy, but it gets
the job done. It doesn't, however, support HTML5. Likewise
Microsoft Office is decently implemented, with collaboration
functionality. However, Office programs lack key functionality
(no font selection in Word, etc.) and PowerPoint editing is
absent.

Likewise SMS/MMS texts and email appear to be done
proficiently. The messaging interface is a bit hard to follow
as all the text bubbles are the same color -- whether you sent them,
or received them. And email has no threaded organization,
though it does have a helpful filter for unread messages.

Then
there's the good. The home hub seems to be very well integrated
and more innovative and informative than Apple's home screen (at
least), if not Android's. Likewise the camera is receiving a
lot of TLC, which results in both faster image capture times and a
nice interface for pictures.

The touch keyboard is also
reportedly fantastic -- at least as good as the iPhone's, which is
saying something. Likewise the built-in
Zune player could also be viewed as a fantastic addition.
If you aren't into music, don't use it. If you are, pony up the
$14.95 a month and you'll be treated to an almost limitless library
of on-demand music -- a true value.

A lot of how people are
reacting to Windows Phone 7 appears to be based on their own
preconceptions. Boy
Genius Report wrote
a rather scathing
review of the OS. Paul Thurrott's Windows
SuperSite,
an obvious Microsoft supporter, on the other hand, wrote
a praise-filled
review of it. And Engadget --
somewhat of a neutral party -- wrote a mixed
review.

Ultimately, customers will likely react to the
phones in a similar fashion if Microsoft is unable to fill in the
holes before its holiday launch. The promise is certainly
there, but is it worth passing up Apple and Google's compelling
options?

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

The iPhone is selling well because of the fan base. If people had waited for a review first I imagine many would have sat on the sidelines to see how Apple was going to respond. I depend on my phone, so I waited for the reviews of the EVO before I jumped. The only negative was the battery. I decided that wasn't a show stopper and just ordered a bigger battery and a couple more micro usb charging cables.

I think a large part of that would actually come from Advertising, it's like back in the Netburst days... AMD had a superior alternative, but Intel still out-sold AMD significantly, despite being slower, having hotter processors, and costing the same if not more. (Does AMD even Advertise?)